A conventional rigid cigarette packet is normally in the form of a right parallelepiped extending along a longitudinal axis and comprising a cup-shaped container having a front wall, a rear wall, two lateral walls and a bottom wall; and a cup-shaped lid which, like the container, has a front wall, a rear wall, two lateral walls and a top wall, and is hinged to the container by a hinge between the rear wall of the container and the rear wall of the lid.
The above type of packet is commonly known as a rigid hinged-lid packet, and is formed from a rigid cardboard blank comprising preformed fold lines, along which it is folded to form the packet. The packet of cigarettes is subsequently wrapped in a sheet of overwrapping material for sealing the packet and maintaining the right degree of humidity of the cigarettes.
The above rigid packet has been marketed successfully for many years, during which, several variations have been designed to make it more practical and improve folding of the blank when forming the packet. A rigid hinged-lid packet and its many variations, however, all share a common drawback closely related to the structure of the packet. More specifically, when the lid is turned about the hinge, a rigid hinged-lid packet has an opening which substantially corresponds to a section of the packet crosswise to the longitudinal axis, and through which the cigarettes project from the container to be gripped by the user.
The cigarettes are normally oriented with the filters facing the lid, so that the filter must be gripped by the user to withdraw a cigarette from the container. Gripping the cigarette, however, by the filter, which is then placed in the mouth, poses problems of hygiene, which could be solved by inverting the cigarettes, i.e. with the filters facing the bottom wall of the container, so that the plain ends of the cigarettes project from the top end of the container. Though more hygienic, inverting the cigarettes inside a rigid hinged-lid packet means the cigarettes must be gripped by the plain ends, thus resulting in tobacco fallout from the ends of the cigarettes. Moreover, the cup shape of the container and the lid makes it difficult to seal between the lid and the container to prevent deterioration of the cigarettes in the event of accidental tearing of the overwrapping.